Let’s Talk: Captain America: Civil War

This week’s blu ray release of Captain America: Civil War has given us here at Let’s Talk an excuse to go back and revisit one of the most anticipated comic book geek movies of the year. A long-time favorite activity for comic book aficionados is to debate who would win in a fight between two comic book characters. These debates are very interesting to comic book nerds and probably not to anyone else. Quick, who would win a fight between Daredevil and Black Widow? Go! Your answer was probably either “Who?” or “Who cares?” but to a comic book nerd this question requires introspection and reasoned debate.

And that is essentially the appeal of this movie to comic book fans. Take a bunch of comic book characters, give them a reason to fight against each other, and then get some popcorn because “Sweet!” The movie itself was based on a popular comic book event from the 2000s also titled Civil War. The popularity of that series led to massive amounts of excitement for the movie and speculation amongst us nerds about who (if anyone) would die. Because in the comics (Spoiler Alert!), characters died and one of those characters was in the movie. Oh how the nerd theories abounded!

In the movie (and the comics), Iron Man and Captain America came down on opposing sides of a law that was passed requiring super heroes to register with the government or be considered terrorists. Iron Man supported the law, while Captain America viewed it as a violation of American ideals of freedom and kicking ass no matter how much collateral damage the aforementioned ass kicking produced. In the movie, this issue was made more personal by Captain America refusing to arrest friend the Winter Soldier because Captain America thought he was innocent. Superheroes were divided on the issues and then there were fights! Lots and lots of destructive, nerdgasming fights!

Also, the movie marked the return of Spiderman to the Marvel film universe. For those of you who don’t follow comic book movies obsessively, before Marvel kicked off its film universe, it sold the rights to many of its popular comic book characters including The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and Spiderman. This has resulted in some good movies and many bad ones (remember Spiderman 3? Me neither, because I refuse to acknowledge it ever happened). Because Marvel no longer has the film rights to those characters, they have yet to appear in any of the new Marvel films. Until this one. Marvel struck a deal with Sony that allowed for Spiderman to appear and this film, and it was by far the best film depiction of Spiderman we have gotten. (Sorry Tobey and the other guy). And there was much rejoicing in the land.

So, to recap, the salient points you’ll want to cover with your beloved comic book geek:

Who fought who? Was it awesome? Did anyone die?

How did you like the movie compared to the comic books? Please elaborate in detail on any and all differences between the two.

How awesome was Spiderman right?

Good luck and enjoy the inevitable family movie night (if it hasn’t already happened).